


You can do magic

by Keenir



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Parent Frigga, young loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-14 21:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1280101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the steps in convincing Loki to study magic, Frigga knew, was to whet his curiosity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Once, long long long ago, I wrote a The Dresden Files fic with a near-identical title to this; they are nothing alike. (still, figured a disclaimer would be good)

"You sent for me, my queen?" Loki asked Frigga.

She didn't sigh - she'd long since learned that this child of hers was prone to switch to middling levels of formality if he was afraid of something. "I did," Frigga said to the young boy that Loki is. "Is something the matter?"

"I've done nothing wrong, yet the Allmother sends for me," Loki said.

"Your tutors speak highly of your skills with the blade and the rope, my son," which relaxed Loki. "When they aren't spending most of their time in my company to praise your brother."

"It is natural that they do so," was all the response he offered.

_And more than I thought he would say to that._ "There are tactics and methods of battle which your brother does not know, and shows little inclination to learn."

"Am I faltering in the lessons on strategy and tactics, Mother?" Loki inquired.

"You are not," Frigga said, and watched the play of emotions flash on and off across Loki's face - _he knows I am famed for my magical skills, but he wishes to compete with Thor with them both being skilled in physical weapons. And that way lies more trouble than is worth._ "You need not do everything Thor does," and was met with a politely blank look. "We all have siblings who overshadow us, my son," Frigga said.

"Father does not," Loki said.

A wry half-smile. _If that is your best defense..._ "The Allfather's sister, Ve, was King Bor's successor, _not_ Odin." And Frigga immediately wondered if that was a poor precedent to lay out before her son.

"I have an aunt?" wondering why he hadn't come across that name in any of the histories of Father's career.

_You did. Before Asgard's war with Jotunheimr, before Asgardr's war with Vanaheimr, after Alfheimr's disaster of a civil war, Odin fought Ve for the throne...or so Odin always told me._ "You did, Loki. She perished before I was old enough to hold a blade." Righting the ship of conversation, "Now, do you wish me to teach you my fighting style?"

"Magic?" Loki asked, skeptical.

Frigga stood and waited, patience learned through long dealings with his fathers - real and foster.

"Please, your Majesty," Loki said.

Frigga magicked a dirk into Loki's hand. And with her own dirk, she swung at her son's chest - narrowly missing him, while deliberately overextending herself.

She watched Loki's reply and what he did in the ensuing sparring. And one thing was clear: _he's focusing his blocks and attacks on my dirk, nowhere else, barely looking further. Still, have to start somewhere._

Loki was thrusting his fist forward, dirk at the end thereof, intending to stop just shy of his mother - having seen Thor use an identical move to induce a surrender on the training sands, _granted it was against a trainee, not anyone near as imposing as Mother_ \- when he realized she was easily closer than he'd thought.

Opening his fist to shed the dirk, Loki also turned his arm in a swing-away-from as he slowed it.

He opened his mouth to apologize for endangering her person - and she blurred into a green cloud of light and _dust?_

And Loki felt a blade at his throat.

"Illusion as well, my son," Frigga said, standing behind him.

"I will have to give it thought," Loki said, not yet committing himself to learning magic.


	2. Promises, promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Loki speaks of Sif's vow, Frigga remembers another.

"What is the matter?" Frigga asked, finding Loki sitting alone atop the flatter section of the palace stables. _I should get him down before Angrboda finds him._

"My friend Sif," Loki said.

Frigga blinked in surprise - _Normally when someone hurts Loki, physically or mentally, they go from being 'our friend' to 'Thor's friend'._ "You seem unbloodied. What words did she use?"

Offering them up to the Allmother, master of all argument - particularly where Loki and Odin were concerned - Loki said "Sif threatened to kill me."

"And this is different from what Thor tells you at playtimes?" Frigga teased him. Seriously, "What were her words, Loki, not the ghist."

"She told me that my death would come for me," Loki said, "and that she would facilitate it."

"That's good," Frigga said.

"Mother?"

"Sif did not threaten you, Loki. She made a promise, a vow. An assurance, if you will."

Loki looked only slightly comforted by that. "But why would she say it so in the first place? I didn't do anything to her or her friends."

"You say she is Jarnsaxa's daughter, did you not?" Frigga asked.

Loki nodded.

"Her mother and I are the reason," Frigga said. "Long before you or your brother were born, the Lady Jarnsaxa and I fought - argued, quarreled - and stopped just short of bloodshed."

"You would have won," Loki informed his mother.

"At the time, I was not certain of that. Also, even if I proved victorious, it would have sparked civil war in Asgard." _And then I would never have known you, Loki._

"Sif is kith and kin of Hymir the old General," Loki said, understanding.

"Precisely." _Only the Allfather's Einherjar has a larger membership than Hymir's cavalry._ "Thus we came to an understanding, Jarnsaxa and I did. And that understanding includes the recognition that neither of us has abandoned our desire to kill the other."

"Still?"

"Nothing has occurred to make either of us lose the causes of our deep angers," Frigga said. "And if we came close enough to try reconciling, we could also do otherwise."

Loki thought on that, and let it influence his tactics in places such as - amongst others - the Stark Tower in Midgard.

* * *

Centuries and centuries later, Sif would hold a sword to Loki's throat and tell him "If you betray him, I will kill you."

_If I betray Thor, your blade would be a kindness by comparison to any other deaths I may meet - no matter how you end me, it will be better. We got along better than our mothers did, and your slaying of me will be finer than what your mother would have done to mine._ And thus Loki replied, "I missed you too, Sif."


	3. The Most Important Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is Loki deluding himself, drawing the wrong final lesson from one of Frigga's phrases of wisdom? Or does he go while knowing the truth? Does he care?

He gives the guard enough time to back away - he has enough control for that, at the least - before unleashing his might in all directions at once. Much of the room is wrecked, and Loki cannot bring himself to be bothered. _Mother is dead. Mother is... Mother._

Cold certainty gripped his head, sureness cooling his temper. _The fool I've been, to have forgotten..._ Loki realizes as he seats himself against a wall, magicking the image of calm serenity and neatness throughout his cell.

As Thor arrives and offers the prospect of revenge, Loki agrees to it - though not for the reason Thor would think: _It is not that they killed her, for try though they did, and for all that everyone thinks it so, they failed to do so. It is that they even attempted it, that they raised a hand against her._

_It shall not stand. Malekith shall fall._

Not even once during their journey out of Asgard or onto the hilly wastes of Svartalfheim, does Loki tell Thor the most important lesson their mother ever impressed upon him.

'However much magic you do, Loki,' Frigga had told him, 'always keep at least one talent in reserve. That one held back, can be all that keeps your enemies from succeeding in killing you.'

And that was the belief he clung tightly to when death came for him.


End file.
